Microsoft job ad advises 'Xbox 720' out by Feb 2014

Waiting for the next generation of Microsoft's Xbox games console? You won't be kept more than 18 months, it seems.

A job vacancy posted on Microsoft's website revealed: "Over the next 18 months, Microsoft will release new versions of all of our most significant products including Windows (Client, Server, Phone and Azure), Office and Xbox."

Don't look for the listing - Redmond's leak police quickly excised the slip-up, but not before PC World spotted it.

But the cat's out of the bag: there'll be an 'Xbox 720' out by February 2014. Christmas 2013, you reckon then?

Not, of course, that World+Dog hadn't figured this broad timetable out anyway. It's well known that the current generation of consoles are nearing the end of their life as flagship products, and that new versions will be out in the next year or two.

Analysts and other observers have been forecasting a 2013/2104 launch for both the next Xbox and the next-generation PlayStation.

Microsoft Windows general manager Brian Hall recently let slip that the company is now timing the release of "the new wave of products that we could have coming out with Windows 8, with the new version of Office, with the new Windows Phone and the new Xbox".

The comment that prompted Redmond spin control to insist that Hall was talking about an Xbox accessory update. ®